Typically, a vehicle has an engine compartment for housing an internal combustion engine on a front-end part of the vehicle, and heat exchangers such as a condenser and a radiator are installed inside the engine compartment. Such a condenser is in fluid communication with another in-vehicle component, such as a compressor, an extension valve, to form a refrigerant circuit. The radiator is in fluid communication with the engine and forms a coolant circuit.
The condenser is typically connected to the compressor and the extension valve through tubes. However, due to recent downsizing trends in vehicles, the housing capacity of the engine component tends to be restricted, and therefore there may be difficulty in connecting such tubes between the condenser and the compressor/the expansion valve in such a limited space.